If you're a Netflix fan looking to hook up with a top notch documentary, I strongly urge you to give the 7 Up series a close look. Up front, we'll concede that it won't be everyone's cup of tea. However, failing to at least check it out may be depriving yourself of a truly remarkable documentary experience.
The 7 Up series is both a moving bit of documentary entertainment and at the same time a study in sociological reflection. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
It was 1964, the very threshold of what has come to be called the 60s, when British TV producers brought together 14 children from a diverse range of backgrounds for purposes of making a documentary on them. At least, it was the relevant diversity from the perspective of the producers, at the time: primarily diversity in gender, race and economic background.
There was an overt premise underlying this 1964 program: the expectation was that the show was providing a glimpse of Britain in the year 2000. The less obvious but equally vital assumption was that these kids' backgrounds would direct the course of their lives into the future. The conclusion of the 1964 installment promised to drop in on these 14 sometime in the 21st century, to see how things had turned out.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
As I write this, in the U.S., January 2013 ushered in the latest installment. The 7 year olds of 1964 are now 56. Perhaps you can imagine how strange this continually moving target of a story is. If you can stick with it, it provides an experience which is truly unique.
It's true that not everyone finds it engaging TV. The less than enthusiastic have criticized it for being too slow and also too mundane. The protest is often along the lines: these people are no more interesting than my friends and acquaintances. Why bother with a TV show about people I already know and whose lives I can watch without the telly, thanks?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
When you think about it, what we have here is the original reality TV show. The difference is that in contrast to the circuses going by that name, today, this reality touches something that is deeply, and at times heartbreakingly, real. Those who have become hooked on the series inevitably come to feel personal attachment with some of the kids-adults as their struggle through their own personal life challenges.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
The 7 Up series is both a moving bit of documentary entertainment and at the same time a study in sociological reflection. It wasn't included on our list of the top 5 of the best documentaries on Netflix only because it really is in a different category.
If you're a fan of the gangster story, you can appreciate the difficulty in attempting to compare a great, one off, film like The Godfather or Goodfellas, with an equally great long arch TV serial like the Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire. There is a completely different experience involved. The long story arch reveals itself more slowly, with more detail and nuance. This is the nature of the difference between this series and your standard documentary.
It was 1964, the very threshold of what has come to be called the 60s, when British TV producers brought together 14 children from a diverse range of backgrounds for purposes of making a documentary on them. At least, it was the relevant diversity from the perspective of the producers, at the time: primarily diversity in gender, race and economic background.
There was an overt premise underlying this 1964 program: the expectation was that the show was providing a glimpse of Britain in the year 2000. The less obvious but equally vital assumption was that these kids' backgrounds would direct the course of their lives into the future. The conclusion of the 1964 installment promised to drop in on these 14 sometime in the 21st century, to see how things had turned out.
However, a young researcher who worked on that original 1964 show would later go on to have a successful career as a film director. Michael Apted, who has a resume that stretches from the Chronicles of Narnia to James Bond, recognized a greater opportunity, here. Seven years later, he returned to the 14 subjects of the original show, to see what had happened in their second seven years of life. And he's gone back every seven years since.
As I write this, in the U.S., January 2013 ushered in the latest installment. The 7 year olds of 1964 are now 56. Perhaps you can imagine how strange this continually moving target of a story is. If you can stick with it, it provides an experience which is truly unique.
It's true that not everyone finds it engaging TV. The less than enthusiastic have criticized it for being too slow and also too mundane. The protest is often along the lines: these people are no more interesting than my friends and acquaintances. Why bother with a TV show about people I already know and whose lives I can watch without the telly, thanks?
For the fans of the series, however, such criticism seems to be entirely missing the whole point. What is remarkable about this series is the transformation of the mundane into the sublime by turning the spotlight upon it. The heroism and humor, the small personal triumphs and tragedies of all our lives, are somehow dignified and ennobled as we watch these 14 people struggle through their own lives.
When you think about it, what we have here is the original reality TV show. The difference is that in contrast to the circuses going by that name, today, this reality touches something that is deeply, and at times heartbreakingly, real. Those who have become hooked on the series inevitably come to feel personal attachment with some of the kids-adults as their struggle through their own personal life challenges.
At the heart of the whole enterprise, though, is a bit of a paradox, which I'm never quite clear about how aware of it the documentarians are. The notion that it captures real lives; the original assumption that socio-economic origins would be charted through the years as determining life choices, this whole founding fabric seems peculiarly blind to the impact of the observer principle.
The observer principle is fashionably, though actually rather mistakenly, associated with a physicist named Heisenberg. People who make this association usually reveal ignorance about what Heisenberg was doing and what he actually discovered. Nonetheless, one is not in need of sub-atomic physics to appreciate the potential impact upon human behavior by one's being aware of being observed.
Though it's less trendy as a pop reference, the appropriate comparison is to the Hawthorne experiments. These were a series of studies conducted by sociologists at a Western Electric plant in the 1920-30s. The point was to observe the behavior of the workers in the plant. It eventually became clear, though, that the very experience of being studied actually changed the behavior of the workers.
It turns out - and is this really a surprise - that when people are conscious of being observed they mold their behavior in ways suited to make a desired impression upon the observer. Without access to some kind of parallel universe, we can obviously never really know how the lives of these 14 people might have gone in other directions, led by the making of different choices, if they weren't (and didn't expect to be) visited every 7 years by television crews. It doesn't though strike me as especially far fetched to conceive there might have been some significant differences.
In some ways, even more that the genuinely moving story of the 14, coming of age, it is that conundrum which most intrigues me as I watch the series. It is a remarkable document that reveals almost as much about the hubris of the filmmakers as the lives of their subjects.
About the Author:
If you're a big time documentary fan, you'll want to follow Mickey Jhonny's work at the Best Documentaries on Netflix blog. Also, for some good fun, have a look at his Top 5 List for all time Best Zombie Movies .
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